Colombia
Objective: Improved water security for socio-ecological systems in the Upper Cauca River Basin
Key findings and activity
With over 30 collaborative workshops completed involving more than 100 participants from different local communities, organisations, industries, and sectors, our Colombia Collaboratory has built strong connections with local and national stakeholders. Community participation and engagement in co-producing the Hub’s research programme has been fundamental to enabling mutually beneficial dialogue and exchange between indigenous and local knowledge and academic knowledges, and the integration of the two is improving decision-making for water management. For example, the team has worked to co-create a community water information system (CWIS), Nuestra Agua (‘Our Water’), to help communities manage local water resources and monitor water use.
Some of the team’s key activities include contributing to an FCDO Briefing; delivering five courses and four webinars; research linking poor water quality to decreasing fish populations; and mapping key pollution sources. Researchers are continuing their work with the Jamundí Secretariat of Tourism, investigating ways of strengthening nature tourism in the municipality to generate economic income for communities in a sustainable manner. Our Colombia team has also been successful in securing funding for several additional projects.
Next steps
Community engagement and empowerment lie at the core of the Colombia team’s work. Ongoing research will centre around the production of collaborative knowledge, bi-directional relationships, and knowledge exchange for improved water management, ecosystem restoration, and land sovereignty. The team already has several further projects underway, including working with colleagues in Leeds and India on cross-cutting themes of water risks and water sensitive planning, and the PUDA project – the creation of a data bank of domestic water use, which will help inform urban water resource decision making. Colombian colleagues are leading our research on socio-ecological justice frameworks for water security and are exploring linkages between inequitable access to water and public health.
